New York prison tailor Joyce Mitchell has admitted that she put hacksaw blades into frozen hamburger meat, a law enforcement official told CNN on Tuesday.
Mitchell then asked Gene Palmer, a prison guard who is now on paid leave, to carry the meat into Clinton Correctional Facility and pass it to convicted killer Richard Matt, who later escaped, the source said.
Palmer didn’t run the meat through a metal detector, a violation of prison policy, according to the source.
Palmer’s attorney, Andrew Brockway, told CNN that his client was unaware there was something in the meat and that he was conned by Mitchell.
CNN reached out to Mitchell’s attorney about the allegation but didn’t hear immediately back.
Matt and David Sweat, another convicted murderer, escaped from the Clinton Correctional Facility in upstate New York more than two weeks ago.
The source said Mitchell for several months routinely vouched for Matt. She would bring baked goods to guards in exchange for favors for the two inmates and went as far as to ask prison officials to move Sweat next to Matt’s cell, according to the source.
Matt and Sweat cut holes through steel cell walls, then shimmied along catwalks and through pipes before emerging from a manhole outside the prison gates and disappearing.
Their escape set off an investigation of employees and practices at the prison.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Corrections said Tuesday there were “a number of ongoing probes” but she wouldn’t comment on details of those investigations.
Mitchell has been charged with aiding the escapees, and Palmer has been placed on paid leave, authorities have said.
Accused of helping the fugitives by supplying chisels and drill bits, Mitchell is in jail and has pleaded not guilty.
Corrections officer used killers as ‘sources’
Palmer is a 28-year veteran of Clinton Correctional Facility and is cooperating fully with the investigation, Brockway told CNN.
Palmer knew Matt and Sweat for years at the prison and had received a painting done by Matt, Brockway said. But he wasn’t aware the inmates were planning an escape, the attorney stressed.
Palmer used Matt and Sweat as “sources” for information that he would “use to ensure the safety of his co-workers and of the facility, and of other inmates,” Brockway told CNN.
“He wants these two individuals to be caught, and anything that he can do to help law enforcement do their job, he’s willing to cooperate,” Brockway said Monday.
The developments come just after authorities revealed the latest tantalizing clue in the search for the inmates.
Cabin break-in; DNA discovery
DNA from Matt and Sweat was found in a burglarized cabin not far from where the convicted murders broke out more than two weeks ago, a law enforcement source told CNN.
Personal items, including boots, were discovered Saturday inside the cabin in Mountain View, some 20 miles west of the prison, another law enforcement source briefed on the investigation told CNN’s Deborah Feyerick.
The items left behind, and the manner in which they were left, suggest the pair were surprised and left in a hurry, according to the source.
The boots left in the cabin suggest one of the fugitives may be barefoot, the source said, possibly hindering his ability to move through the dense brush. But there may have been other boots and shoes in the cabin that were taken by the pair.
Authorities are combing the area near the cabin.
The discovery re-energized the search, now in its 18th day. The men haven’t been seen since their escape worthy of a movie script — at least not by authorities.
Tailor’s husband says he was target
The man whose wife is accused of helping two killers escape a prison in upstate New York says the men planned to kill him.
Lyle Mitchell told NBC’s “Today” show that Joyce Mitchell revealed the prisoners’ alleged plan to harm him shortly after their escape. Matt allegedly told Joyce he would give her pills that would knock her husband out, so she would have no problem leaving their home to come meet him.
“She told me that Matt wanted her to pick him up,” Lyle Mitchell said. But Joyce Mitchell refused to drug her husband, so the convicts got tough on her, she told him. “(Matt) started threatening her, (saying) someone inside the facility was going to do something to me, to harm me, or kill me, or somebody outside of the jail, if she didn’t stay with this,” Lyle Mitchell told NBC’s Matt Lauer in an exclusive interview that aired Tuesday.
But not staying with the plan is precisely what authorities say happened: Joyce Mitchell didn’t show up for the planned rendezvous with Matt and Sweat on June 6. Instead, she checked herself into a hospital with panic attacks. “I was in over my head,” Lyle Mitchell said his wife told him. “She said she loved me but she was in too deep.”
Had she kept the date, she’d be dead now, Lyle Mitchell believes. And he might be, too.
He still loves his wife, though he’s mad at her, Mitchell said. But support her? “As of right now, I don’t know what to think,” he said.
Both of the Mitchells worked at the prison in its tailoring block, and investigators said Joyce Mitchell, 51, had a sexual relationship with Matt. Lyle Mitchell didn’t know about that relationship, Clinton County District Attorney Andrew Wylie said.
Rugged search perimeter
Franklin County Sheriff Kevin Mulverhill told CNN that the current search area is about the size of the town of Bellmont, New York, which is about 170 square miles. Authorities have flooded the area with helicopters, cruisers and all-terrain vehicles.
“It’s very rough terrain,” said Mulverhill. “It’s not easy to get to, it’s not easy to traverse.”
So rugged, in fact, that the law enforcement source said it’s slowing down search teams. But, unlike the inmates — one of whom may now be barefoot — searchers are rotating in and out, getting rest and food, and are better equipped to handle the punishing underbrush.
Franklin County District Attorney Glenn MacNeill urged residents to be on alert. “Be inside with the doors locked and very diligent,” he said.